I have this rock song that is very poorly tracked. Any wizards out there that can do magic with mixing? Or at least anyone that's simply up for a challenge? I know that if it's garbage in it's garbage out, but perhaps a little nicer garbage.

The biggest problems are the drums and the vocals. Feel free to replace the drums!

Hey Spoiled, you're not doing anything wrong. 12ax7 must have had a problem, because I can download the files just fine.

I'm working on your fine song at the moment. I've pretty much torn it apart and slowly building it up again. It's a difficult one to mix, for sure.

I'm holding my breath!

Quote:

Originally Posted by charliebug

I'll take a look at it and see about retracking the drums. I'm at work now and can't listen to it on my phone:( what style drumming are you looking for?

Pretty much the style that I'm trying to play one that rough mix. Tré Cool meets Steve Adler. Simplicity. Less is more. Can't stand double pedal kick style.

And like I said before, the biggest problem with the song is the drums. There's also a guitar fill on track 08 that needs to be muted on the first verse (like it is in the rough mix). Then there's a gallop on the first pre chorus, which is, well...not in perfect timing. Turns out, I don't have Hetfield's rapid fingers, but I guess there's not much to do about that. I just want the song to be listenable.

Ok, so I just took a listen to your track. Are you looking for that washed out reverby sound on the drums? If so, I'll give a mid side oh pattern a try.

Well, I don't have any preferences when it comes to reverb, I just want the song to rock. And as you can tell, I don't really know how to make it so. If you're gonna try something, just do what you think will make the song kick ass.

so here goes my first take. ill be honest, this take was the first time i listened to the song more than half way thru let me know if you are diggin this vibe or if i should take another aproach. im also just playing around with some vox distortion by HEAVY compression. just and idea...

so here goes my first take. ill be honest, this take was the first time i listened to the song more than half way thru let me know if you are diggin this vibe or if i should take another aproach. im also just playing around with some vox distortion by HEAVY compression. just and idea...

Can't stop smiling!
Too bad the rest now sounds like garbage in comparison. But yes, it sounds great! Maybe distorsion is a good idea since it will make it sound dirtier, and therefor will match the other instruments better.

That break that you do after the intro, when the song takes off, is repeated all through the song, if you can match the bass line with that it would be awesome. Then at the second pre chorus there's a stop, then it starts off slowly and builds up to normal speed again. I guess there's no need to explain all this, since it's pretty obvious if you listen to my drum track.

cool cool. ill give it another go and see if i can make some magic happen. im also going to play around with "rerecording" the guitar thru my fender devvile if you dont mind. maybe get a better sound. ill post back in an hour or so.

https://soundcloud.com/cnehr-1/never-had-time-2
so here is my 2nd go at it. on this take i payed more with the vox. i ran them thru my devvile with a hell of a lot of presence and a bit of drive. it made for and interesting sound. im not sure what you are listening back on, so you might not notice the difference. its nothing important tho, just more messin around. more importantly, how does this drum take sound to you?

Okay Spoiled. Here's my mix. Pull up a chair. Your song took me in a surprising direction. The song and your vocals reminds me of Bowie, Beatles and Elvis Costello and I got carried in that direction. I truly think your song is a gem.

Metrik, im curious to know what you used for the drum sounds. im assuming midi samples. are they your own samples? either way, very impressive. i just started getting my hands dirty with recording and "engineering"(i by no means consider myself an engineer yet) for about a year now. i feel like i could pick your brain for hours!

https://soundcloud.com/cnehr-1/never-had-time-2
so here is my 2nd go at it. on this take i payed more with the vox. i ran them thru my devvile with a hell of a lot of presence and a bit of drive. it made for and interesting sound. im not sure what you are listening back on, so you might not notice the difference. its nothing important tho, just more messin around. more importantly, how does this drum take sound to you?

What can I say? It truly rocks! Thanks for doing this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Metrik

Okay Spoiled. Here's my mix. Pull up a chair. Your song took me in a surprising direction. The song and your vocals reminds me of Bowie, Beatles and Elvis Costello and I got carried in that direction. I truly think your song is a gem.

Again: WHAT CAN I SAY? I had no idea what you did was even possible. Cool to hear my song in such a different style. Thanks a million!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrFreaKSir

Working on a version here too

Can't wait. When I started this thread I honestly thought people were gonna make fun of me, considering the other stuff I've seen posted here.

Well here's my stab at it. I agree you cant polish a turd (even though the version above did) but you can certainly throw a little glitter on it. I hope you don't mind but i redone the "Hetfield" galloping guitar track myself and tightened it up a little. I also took a hacksaw to the arrangement a bit but I think it works.

I haven't had a chance to play this back loudly through my monitors but it sounds pretty good through my AKG headphones. If I get a chance to I'll have a bit of tweak of it but for now, enjoy.

Metrik, im curious to know what you used for the drum sounds. im assuming midi samples. are they your own samples? either way, very impressive. i just started getting my hands dirty with recording and "engineering"(i by no means consider myself an engineer yet) for about a year now. i feel like i could pick your brain for hours!

Thanks charliebug. Yes, it's midi. I created a tempo map for the song, to be able to add midi drums properly and to be able to easily correct the most prominent timing issues on all of the other tracks. The tempo of the song varies a lot - 156 to 166 bpm.

I used Massey DRT2 to extract drums from the overhead and kick mics and to convert them to midi. Without DRT2, I wouldn't have done this.

The samples and grooves are not my own. I built the drumkit and drumtrack using SSD 4, layering a few drums from the Custom and CLA sample packs.

Feel free to pick my brain I enjoyed your 4 mic approach to your drums and the effort to lay down a whole new track.

here is what i hope to be a link to the drum tracks i threw down. just in case anyone wants to use them. im not familiar with mediafire, so im not sure if its a good link.

Your link works fine. Thanks for the tracks, I really appreciate it! I'll try mixing it myself with your drums. Wont be until a couple of weeks though, since I'm going traveling tomorrow.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MrFreaKSir

Well here's my stab at it. I agree you cant polish a turd (even though the version above did) but you can certainly throw a little glitter on it. I hope you don't mind but i redone the "Hetfield" galloping guitar track myself and tightened it up a little. I also took a hacksaw to the arrangement a bit but I think it works.

I haven't had a chance to play this back loudly through my monitors but it sounds pretty good through my AKG headphones. If I get a chance to I'll have a bit of tweak of it but for now, enjoy.

Thanks! The only issue I have with it is the timing on the second verse, but I guess I can't blame anyone but myself for that. I'm amazed by the creativity and skill that people on this forum posses.

Metrik, I'm always impressed when I hear people use midi as tastefully as you did with this song. That might be due to the fact that I'm so well versed with that aspect of engineering. My needs in the studio don't typically call for it, as I mainly record live bands.

Another thing of your mix that I noticed was how powerful the bass guitar sounded. How did you achieve that? I'm workin on a "math rock" style project right now with a bassist that likes to tap a lot. I'm having difficulties capturing that low end without blowing up the high end. The high end of the bass just dominates the mix.